Cedar Mountain Mandolin Company

About Us

Since 2008, I’ve been building traditionally styled instruments in the mandolin family based on the Loar F5 & A5 original designs utilizing the highest quality materials & hardware and applying innovative engineering & construction techniques for the professional musician. In addition to traditional designs, I’ve also built numerous custom stringed instruments ranging from Octave Mandolins (based on the Gibson L5 Guitar body style) to Acoustic Double Basses.

Modern Engineering Techniques

As an engineer, I believe in applying modern engineering techniques to the traditional art of building Stringed instruments. Some of the advancements that I have incorporated in my construction process include the Acoustic Tuningof the soundboard and backboard plates and introducing a Tension CompensatedFret Scale, accounting for fretted string tension to provide perfect intonation over the ENTIRE fret scale.

Acoustically tuning soundboards in one form or another has been around for well over a hundred years and is one of the defining traits of the Gibson Loar Mandolins of the early 1920’s, the widely accepted “Stradivarius” of mandolins. Different techniques have been used over the years ranging for “Chlandi patterns” to “Tap Tuning”. From an engineering standpoint, Tap tuning is called “Modal analysis” and is a very well established engineering technique for accurately measuring the resonant frequencies of a body, like a mandolin body, and is used by the world leading manufacturers from airplanes to automobiles. What is different from other Luthiers is that I use an Agilent 35670 digital spectrum analyzer to very accurately measure ALL of the resonant frequencies of a soundboard (using a calibrated hammer and accelerometers) which allows me to consistently tune soundboards for maximum resonance across a specific range of notes on the fret board. The result is an instrument that really “stands out“, “Barks”, “sings”, cuts through” however you want to describe it, in the note range that you normally like to play. Modal Analysis is what enables the powerful, balanced tone, consistently from our mandolins.

Intonation is another improvement that I’ve been able to achieve through implementation of a technique developed by Gary Magliari at the Guild of American Luthiers called the Tension Compensated Fret Scale. This technique allows me to compensate for the slight ‘Sharpness” of notes as you move up the neck due to action height and increased string tension (thus sharping notes) during fretting. We’ve solved this problem by accurately modeling the string tension increase during fretting at each fret position and then modifying the fret scale and providing compensation at both the nut and bridge. The end result is that every fret intonates perfectly, all the way up the neck!

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About us

Cedar Mountain Mandolin Company builds traditional and custom stringed instruments for the professional musician. Our traditional designs are based on the Gibson Loar era F & A style mandolins using only the highest quality materials and hardware, utilizing innovative engineering & construction techniques.